A former California family who thought about surviving, not just "prepping", has taken the plunge. Follow them on their new adventures in Colorado through their trials and tribulations

Friday, October 12, 2012

Rock-knocking and selling sheep for more preps

Girl has been telling me all week that her class is talking about arrowheads. She wanted to know if she could bring her flake to school. As long as the teacher says it's OK. You don't want to bring rocks to school if your teacher doesn't want you to. She then asked if I'd talk to the class about arrowheads. Sure. I can give the Indian hunting and gathering speech better than the teacher. So girl arranged for me to come to class this afternoon to talk about arrowheads. The sixth grade teachers brought all the kids into one class so I could talk to them all. I didn't really have anything planned, now I have 60 bright eyed kids staring at me.So I did what any resourceful grandparent would do...not really, but perhaps what any resourceful prepper would do. I started knocking rocks together. See this rock? It's called a hammer stone. If you think of a hammer you think of a nice flat face to hit something with. Right? Then I took a marker, wrapped my fingers around it and started hitting it to push it through my fingers. A hammer. But that's not how the Indians used hammer stones. They would look for sharp edges. So this rock fits into my hand well and has sharp edges all the way around. Then I took a piece of chert (my core) and hit the chert with the hammer stone. Bang!That got their attention as several flakes of rock broke off. Then I drew on the board to show that you'd want the chert/ obsidian/ quartz/ basalt/ or whatever glassy type of rock you have to have less than a 90 degree angle. Then I started drawing angles on the board. You can't get through any type of lecture from me without my throwing math into it. If you don't have a good enough angle the force from you hitting the edge of the core with your hammer stone will never break off a piece of the rock. You need less than 90 degrees. Then I hit the chunk of chert again and again. Rock against rock. I picked up some of the flakes from the floor. See how sharp these edges are? Sharp enough to cut the cording holding the teachers keys. I picked up the teachers keys and pretended to slice the cord. No, I won't cut this. Then the teacher wouldn't want me to come back another day. I then passed the rocks around the class so each of the kids could knock rocks together. They each got to make some flakes. Sure you could then get a bone (or nail) and turn the flakes into arrowheads, or dart points, or spear points, or knives, but the kids had fun just with the basic flakes. They now all know how to break rocks to make a cutting tool. I was able to talk just a little about hunting and gathering, but mainly the focus was on the flakes. The kids had a great time. One boy gave me his phone number so I could call him over the weekend to discuss making flakes. He wanted me to talk to his parents so they could learn. I told him he could teach them this handy new skill. Getting to teach 60 kids a little self sufficiency without anyone having a clue that I was coming in to do anything more than teach about arrowheads. Not bad. As soon as we arrived home after school I got a phone call from someone wanting to buy more sheep. I sold him my last three rams that were available to be sold. I just have my breeding ram and a replacement breeding ram left. I told this guy that I'd have more in the spring. He bought about a dozen sheep from me this year. This surprise money is going straight to preps. My goal is to do some huge "if TSHTF next week and I have one week advance notice to prepare" type of shopping sprees by the end of this month. I've been trying to save money and selling these sheep will make the shopping a little easier. I will be doing a couple separate shops. First to Harbor Freight. Their stuff isn't the best quality but some of the items I'd rather have quantity than quality. It's the perfect store for that. Then off to a real hardware store, then to Winco the food store, and I'll top it off with a trip to either Sam's Club or Costco. All of it is anonymous cash except Sam's Club or Costco. I may as well use a charge card to get bonus cash. Those club stores track all your purchases anyway. Fortunately, it's not uncommon to purchase 50 pounds of rice or 25 pounds of oatmeal at once.

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About Me

With over 19 years working on our preps and after having a created a fully prepared 5 acres in the Great Central Valley of California, we up and moved to a very small town in Colorado. We are now on 35 acres with no fruit trees, no garden, a home that isn't finished, and no job. Sounds like paradise, or at least it will be. Lots of work to do. How much time do I have before there's no time left?
We still have food storage and lots of provisions, but are not in any way self sufficient...yet. Follow us on our new adventure. Perhaps you'll learn something from us and from your comments we can learn something from you.